Chicken Fat

Saturday, April 29, 2006

See Ya

We are leaving for a trip to first Amelia Island, Florida, then on down the road to Jacksonville for Anna to attend a business summit. I am just along as a man-servant.

While she is at her meetings I will free to ride up and down in the elevators, knock on doors and run, and spy of females sun-bathing by the pool.

I told my wife I might hang around the pool and let the bikini clad young women there take times rubbing sun lotion on me, or maybe go to the beach and play volley ball with some girls (also in bikinis). She didn’t look worried.

I do not know what the network communications will be like. I know they say they have a computer available in a common place for people to check their email and go on-line. Just how deep one can dive into the Internet remains to be seen.

And, even if I can get in – I hope I can do things right to get to the stern of my blog and have control of it for a few minutes to mouth off whatever comes to find.

I think I have all the addresses I need to get to my blog. But I won’t know until I am there (or not).

And also some of your blogs I read daily so I will try to continue to do so, but again, I doubt if I will be able to make a comment – since I am writing from a strange computer it may not recognize me as “member”.

If you don’t hear from me all week, I will probably be back spouting off and sharing old photos late next Friday or Saturday.

Concert Downtown

Yesterday evening we had dinner at the 3 Bears Cafe, which has an unusual menu, mostly low-in-fat items. We had sweet potato pancakes. We could have had an ostrich burger or a bison burger, or a bunch of other low fat kind of stuff. And they had a guitar strummer there too.

And after that we went to park located in the very central of downtown and in time got to enjoy a live beach-music concert.

It is always enjoyable to watch these people in their 60s and 70s get to rocking with the type of music they matured on. And it is enjoyable watching the younger yuppie generation popping their wind corks and looking modern and rich, and it also enjoyable watching the teenage generation walking around looking for a pickup or to be the pickupee.Life in these United States.And the song "Be Young - Be Happy" is playing in my head... why don't I remember the rest of the song?

Oh-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum Mate!! Aarree!

I snapped this at the Colonel Cemetery in Savannah. Unfortunately, the wall is lined with markers that they have yet matched with the underground remains since some vandals did damage of 20 years ago, when the last time we were there.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Virginia Hill

I was in downtown Marietta and saw that her house is for sale. The sign says, "History for Sale."

Virginia Hill grew up in Marietta and graduated from Marietta High School. She was Bugsy Malone's girlfiend.

After she became famous as being Bugsy's girlfiend she would visit Marietta often to visit her mother. She came so often she bought a house.

She was known for riding a horse all over Marietta as he means of transportation. They said she was also spending cash for things while here and tipping big. She got plenty of service - all the young men were at her beck and call.

Photo Moment

This barn is not far from us. I run or bike by it sometimes when I exercise.

The yard is a corner lot. The barn is behind the house. In front of the house, facing both roads is a huge sign saying something like "GET OUT OF THE UNITED NATIONS" and in smaller print it has The John Birch Society and the 1-1800 number.

Bush may help them with that request. Before he gets through, we might be kicked out of the United Nations.

"Action Philosophers" #3 "Action Philosophers" #4When you think of action, only one name springs to mind: Plato.

Okay, maybe not, but if Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey have anything to say about it, it soon might. They're the creators of the new Xeric Award winning comic book series "Action Philosophers," a series detailing the life and thoughts of some of history's greatest thinkers through Van Lente's slightly warped humor and artist Dunlavey's dynamic, cartoon influenced art.

Instead of a dry treatise on deep thoughts, you get Bodhidharma's students trying to get him to teach them to learn the "gaze so hard it drills holes in mountain" trick to help them pick up girls, or Isaac Newton strangling Dunlavey for drawing him getting hit on the head by the apple. It's not your ordinary book on philosophy.

"The title, sure, is a gag-- and has led a bunch of people who haven't read the book to think it's about philosophers dressed as super heroes beating on each other-- but to me it also implies that thinking is an active process," Van Lente told CBR News. "Most of the stories are as much about how that philosopher reached the conclusions that he did, based on his or her biography and what he or she went through or was exposed to in his or her early life. To me that's the most inspiring and gripping thing about reading these tales-- to follow exactly how the philosopher went from one position to the other, and (oftentimes), altered the course of human history in the process."

Philosophy and humor might seem like a strange fit to most, but to series writer Van Lente, it's a perfect fit.

Living in the Living Room

Navy VII

In the last segment we mourned the death of John F. Kennedy and I brought my car up from Georgia.

Two items I overlooked was Sunday after I returned there was a big fire nearby out in the pines someplace near. Everybody in the barracks were ordered to be on standby to fight the raging fire. As many things people are put on standby for, our call to action never came. We just sat around and talked and couldn’t go out to eat.

Another, Thanksgiving Day, it was lonely and sad in the chow hall. It was sad because we were still in shock over the president getting shot. While eating about a dozen men came in with orange flight suits on. They were Norwegian sailors. They were off the coast of New Jersey and there ship sunk. Our helicopters saved them. Now, they got a free meal.

The above was just two little fragments of history that had no effect on my life, but I just thought it was interesting.

Now that I had my car, I thought I would drive to Carmel, New York, to visit my uncle, which was one of my mother’s brothers. I called him and he told me to come on up, and gave me directions, and bring my friends if I wanted. I invited Don and Reuben along.

We left on a Friday evening. It has been a long time to recall the highway we took, but it might have been the Palisades Parkway. Somehow I related it to the same highway that Sonny, in the movie GODFATHER, got mowed down on.

Whatever road we took we turned on the wrong ramp or exit and before we knew it we were in Brewster, Connecticut. We got off on the first exit and turned around. But, I get to count as a state I have been in, even though it was less than five minutes.

Somehow we got back on the right road or highway and found Carmel.

My uncle, William Leroy “L-Rod” (we called him “Roy”) Petty was a famous hero on D-Day. He climbed the cliffs at Normandy Beach and ended up shooting many Germans… I mean, a big number, he found himself in the middle of bunch of them and killed them all. And throughout the day killed bunches at a time.

Roy is one of the principle characters in the movie Rudder’s Rangers by Robert L. Lang. He was also in the book “Longest Day”, which he served as technical director when they made the movie.

He told our family each time ahead of time – for a few years on the Sunday closest to D-Day he was asked to stand up in the Ed Sullivan audience.

He married a glamorous New Yorker by the name of Dorothy. Their marriage lasted nine or ten years. She left Roy and married an heir of Pillsbury and moved to Tarrytown, New York. Dorothy and her their two sons Billy and Rodney were once in a full page insurance ad in Saturday Evening Post. She was very gracefully holding her two sons and the ad asks will you be prepared if something should happen to your husband.

Apparently, she made her own preparations.

Roy got custody of the kids in the divorce.

He and his two sons lived on top of a big hill that in a big house that he built himself. It was big then, but I doubt if today’s standards it would be considered big.

It was brick, with an upstairs of four bedrooms and an office, the main level had a big kitchen, dining room, living room, den, and a big screened-in side porch. Also a big enclosed carport and a full basement.

Paintings by him hung everyplace – which I may show some of them in a future blog.

He was cooking dinner when we arrived and he sent us to downtown Carmel, probably about 2 or 3 miles away to get beer on his tab at a local old fashion general store that you would only see in rural areas. Rodney went with us and told the man behind the cash register to put it on Dad’s tab, without signing anything. And the man nodded not asking for proof or anything.

Carmel, NY, is the home of Readers Digest, which the town seems very much like a Readers Digest kind of New England town.

When we arrived it was dark. We didn’t get to see the outside.

We had a pretty good drinking session after dinner, talking about many subjects, including religion. Roy was an atheist.

He has been dead about five years now, so he either knows he was wrong, or if he is right I suppose he is in oblivion.

The next morning we went with a walk with my first cousins Rodney and Billy. What we couldn’t tell the night before was the beautiful scene looking from his house and front yard. High up on the hill we looked down on a huge lake which we were told was the New York City Water Reservoir.

On our morning walk in the beautiful country side we were walking along the curvy road at the base of the hill they lived on top and a car sped around the corner which we had to jump out of the way and the boys’ dogs didn’t jump in time. His tail got cut off.

This was a get-reacquainted-visit. That I hope to mention some of the things that happened in some visits that was yet to come.

We mostly visited and ooing and ahhing over Roy’s works in various endeavors.

Before the war he was going to the University of Georgia. After the war he started a laundry business in Dalton, Georgia, and it didn’t prosper fast enough for him so he sold it and went back to the University of Georgia to finish up and get his degree, which he did.

During our conversations I mentioned that Berry College in Rome turned me down when I applied there. He said they won’t now.

And sure enough, in a few weeks I got a letter, with my HU-4 address, from the director of admissions of Berry College saying the looked at my application again and decided that I was accepted. I was to just let them know when my active duty was over. Probably one of my many mistakes, I didn’t follow up.

When he lived in New York City he was an athletic coach for the youth at Madison Square Garden. After a while he was offered a position as director of a youth club at Clearpool Camp, Carmel, NY. The biggest benefactor of the youth camp was the Heinz Foundation, which he also worked for them and had an office in the city.

Elijah Petty's Daughters

These women are my g-g grandfather's daughters. They were born between 1840 and 1860, mostly in Fannin Co., Ga., in a the Suches community near Blue Ridge.

All but one of them scattered to the western plains states with their husbands and their kids. So, being sitting together all at one time makes me think the picture was taken about 1881, the year of their father's death. But if that was the case the oldest one would be about 41 and the youngest about 21. I think they look older than that, but pioneer life probably ages one - but I don't think that much.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Dick the Puppeteer

Up and At 'Em!

I normally wake up at 4:30 on week days but this morning I woke up at 3:30 but did not get up until 4:00. The reason I woke up was I had to pee. Now, I could get up and pee, get my body circulating, which will stimulate me staying awake and hope I could go back to sleep. Being in a strain for 30 minutes was long enough.

Which threw off my schedule.

I have an enlarge prostate which many elderly men have. Which scrunches against the bladder, causing a long pee-storage time uncomfortable. However, for over a year now I have been taking Saw Palmetto, which somehow relieves the pressure and many nights I can get through most the night. Before Saw Palmetto I was getting up 2 or 3 times a night.... now, my down time is just cut sort for an hour or less most nights.

That is probably all you care to read about my bladder capacity and control.

Yesterday afternoon was busy. I picked up my sister at a letting out point for the bus full of seniors that went on the Washington, DC, trip. It must have been fun for her. She was a stranger to all when the trip started. When she was leaving everybody was hugging her.

I noticed plenty of people when getting off the bus would hand the bus driver an envelope. I wondered if my sister was going to hand me envelope when I lugged her suit case of the flight of stairs of her house and back to her room. NOT!

Then I had some time to kill so I went to Sports Authority and found the type of pedometer I was in the market for. So, I bought it. I also looked at the bikes because I am considering upgrading my bike. But again, I might find something cheaper and better at a yard sale.

Then I had Wendy's chili for dinner. While I was eating four or five Marietta City Police came in. I noticed there were only two police cars in the parking lot, so that tells me they go two per car. That is good. Many police are killed in doing their duty these days, which would be less likely if there were two of them. The Cobb County Police only have one per car, but I noticed that when one has someone pulled over, usually a second police car is near, overlooking it all.

Then I went to the Central Library. It was 6pm, I still had an hour before the Cobb County Genealogical Society met. This month's speaker was a professor giving a talk on Indian Trails in Cobb County, which she really gave the history of the trails and how the Indians got screwed, and she had some unkind words to say about Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson.

A brother of an ancestor mine owned a farm next door to The Hermitage, near Nashville, and was a pallbearer at his funeral. I saw no need to share that with the professor, I wasn't there to name drop.

I went there last Tuesday, getting my Tuesdays of the month mixed up, so I made up for it.

While waiting for the meeting to start I checked out two CDs, one was Buddy Moss's "Atlanta Blues" and the other one was "The Very Best of John Lee Hooker".

In the library there are easy chairs all over the place for people to read. They seem to be mostly, but not limited to, the magazine section. There, it is meant, I suppose that people can relax and read. In other places there are upright chairs at tables, in areas people would mostly likely do research.

One thing I noticed, in the magazine area a lot of people sitting in the easy chairs relaxing reading magazines have back-packs. They are homeless. At nine o'clock they will be shooed out. In the winter time there are more.

I went to the Georgia Room and utilized my time doing some research. I spent four or five dollars on copies at 15cents a page of pages of a Macon County, NC, deed book, that my surnames were listed in the index.

Then I got down the Cobb County Marriage book (1834-1937) and found a good many uncles, aunts, and cousins who got married. I listed them all. Two of the names were Edwin Tyson Hunter and Ethel America Petty, February 27, 1937, Marriage Book L, p106. My parents.

Aisle #3 Incident

Just one more about the Dahlonega area.

On our way up to Dahlonega I noticed a certain convenience store in Dawsonville, about 7 miles south of Dahlonega and on the way back we ate at Wild Man’s Barbecue across the highway from the same convenience store.

We have a history with that store.

Back when our sons were young a carrier by the name of Kenny at work was telling me about 100 acres of land he and his girlfriend jointly bought in Dawsonville. He said it had a creek running through the property and he rigged up a mining table, that pumped water up on a table, and somehow you shift the creek sand from the bottom and the gold remains, and so far he has found several tiny little gold nuggets.

He suggested that I bring Anna and the boys up and he would demonstrate it for them and they could mind for gold. Which we did and they found some little bitty gold pieces. The pieces found you can put it in a container of water and it quickly sinks to the bottom and hits with a “clunk” sound.

So, we mined for gold and also had a picnic. We built a fire in a rock pit Kenny made and had hotdogs and chips.

Ken’s girlfriend was maybe ten to fifteen years older than he and her face was very painted up with rouge and lipstick to hide the wrinkles. With all that batter on her face, she sort of prissed around like she was one hot mama.

They never consummated their relationship, probably because he was the shy type along with her “holier than Thou” attitude. She started dating somebody else in their church and talked Kenny is selling her his share of the property.

When we went up there to meet them to mine for gold we met them at a pre-selected place, the convenience store mentioned above.

When we drove into the parking lot they were waiting. Ken said how would we like to have a picnic, cook hot dogs on a fire and we said that sounded great.

So Ken and I went into the store to buy what we needed for the cookout. We bought wieners, buns, potato chips, and Cokes. Ken walked up to the counter and asked the lady behind the counter where was the condiments. She said on aisle 3. Kenny and I walked over to aisle 3 and their was no catsup or mustard.

We walked back to the cashier and asked again for the condiments. She said aisle 3. This time we made sure, we looked on both sides carefully, and nope… no catsup and mustard.

We went back to the cashier and told her we looked carefully and there was no condiments on aisle 3.

She said, “Yes, they are there.” And she walked out from behind the counter and we followed her to aisle 3 and she pointed to the different brands of condoms and said, “There are your condiments!”

I broke out laughing. Kenny looked embarrassed. He said something to the effect, “No No, we mean catsup, mustard, things like that!”

Her face got very red and she realized her mistake. She showed us the correct aisle. When we added up our purchases she was laughing and embarrassed, her face was very red.

I suppose she thought we had a couple of hot chicks out in the car raring to go.

Kenny said that he kept stopping by that store and from time to time and each time the cashier would laugh with him over that incident.

Bus

This is my uncle Bus, my father's oldest brother, and the last sibling to die. His real name was Robert Ray Hunter- but Bus was the nickname that he went by.

He died last year at age 96. He spent most his working life as a electric lineman for a rural electric company. At his funeral the preacher told "Bus" stories, which delt mostly with his strenght. To hear him talk he was something like a Georgian Paul Bunyan.

Bus was also a poet. During the war he wrote long poems to hs parents. Bus could recite poems by Poe, Whitman, and many others and was doing it at his 95th birthday party.

He had the unfortunate of buying his only child, who was a pilot and shot down in Vietnam.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Daytona Beach 1960

In 1960 our senior year, the night after we graduated we headed to Daytona Beach, Florida. I think it was May the 27th.

I made reservations for four of us at a big green stucco building named the Renee. They was only one of two that responded to my request, and of the two it was cheaper.

On the way down I rode with Monty. That was before expressways. You had to drive through each little town between here and your destination. In one little Georgia town the signs in the middle of town were confusing. I think two or three highways crossed and started there and some of them had similar numbers. We was sitting in the car trying to figure the signs and the map out when a policeman with a dog on a leash walked by. He reminded me of the old Civil Defense officers who walked the streets at night, and this wasn’t that many years after the Civil Defense Corps, if it wasn’t still going on. One friend was standing by the car getting some fresh air.

We asked the policeman about directions and he told us how to go. He was leaning over telling us when he said, “Is that a beer can there?” (pointing to an empty beer can in the floorboard in the front seat). Monty said, “Its empty sir” (ignoring the fact that there were several full ones iced down in the back seat.

The policeman said, “Get out of the car boys”. With that, Monty started the car and we sped off. Leaving our friend standing by the policeman and the dog.

Our friend looked as surprised as the policeman and then started running through a park. Monty circled around and rode up to our friend and slowed down, then stopped. Our friend opened the door and he jumped into the car and we sped off, just as the policeman, not use to running at his age, came walking up almost to the car towards hurriedly.

The Renee House It was across the street from a big outside round orchestra shell looking thing. The rounded half-opened, good for acoustics kind of thing with rows of chairs in the open in front of the stage.

Next to it was a boardwalk and a pier with carnival type gyp joints and rides.

After that was the beach that you could drive on if you wanted and then the Atlantic Ocean.

It seems the Renee Inn was about four stories high. All rooms had to be entered by a hallway except the ones on ground level.

A good many high school people stayed at the Renee. The manager was a nervous bald-headed chubby man. He watched every move we made. We called him Wart.

There was also lurking nearby an elderly man with a walking stick. He seemed to appreciate our youth and seemed to be get a kick out of our carrying on. He was either the owner or just a permanent person with a room – I forgot the name we ordained him with, it seems he got by with just his first name, something like Ralph.

At the Renee probably at least 30 Marietta kids were staying there, and up the beach, at a nicer motel, right on the ocean another 30 or 40 kids (with chaperones) and down the beach in some beach front bungalows, also with chaperones, maybe 10 to 20 kids.

I found a cheap dive of a restaurant that had a breakfast special for 39 cents which we all went to every morning. We got at least one good meal a day – for .39! Not bad.

All three places were having continuously parties. Just about everybody at one time or another on the trip drunk themselves silly.

One friend there was Bubba. Bubba was wealthy. His father owned a textile plant that made underwear and socks. Bubble stayed drunk the entire week. He wore a straw hat that seemed bigger than his head the whole time. A friend Clare brought her car, a Metropolitan. Early in the week Clare and a friend was going someplace in her Metropolitan. Bubba wanted to go, but there was no room in the tiny Metropolitan. So, he rode on the back, standing on the bumper. As they drove off Clare tooted her horn for us to see, she pointed with her thumb to back of the car. There was Bubba with his straw hat standing on the bumper holding a beer in one hand and his penis in the other. He was urinating as they drove off.

Clare married and moved to a neighboring county and became a newspaper reporter and after that a detective in that same county. She was on TV about 8 years ago about unsolved mysteries. Bubba had just about nine or ten more years to live.

He was a representative for his father’s company and was on the road a lot, and nobody really knew his schedule or where he would go next. He was found dead in a cheap motel in Texas, after being dead about three days.

Our first night there a bunch of us (not me) got into a fight with some Atlanta boys that also just graduated. For a couple of days we thought we were going to have a rumble.. but the hype and interest sort of fizzled out. Thank God.

Ronnie Witcher, who died recently, and I one night were walking along the beach coming from the bungalows already mentioned back to the Renee and up ahead of were two women. We caught up with them and they were both drunk. As we walked and talked to them we found out one was the other one’s mother. The youngest one was pregnant. So Ronnie more or less said he knew they both were experienced in sex and all he wanted was them to give us a little training. Oddly enough, they played us alone, but probably we were not as bold as we pretended, nothing happened. Just all talk.

One friend, Mark, parked his car, a red Impala, on the beach near the pier. Later Mark was no place to be found when several of us watched the tide come in and partly got salty water up to probably the hubcaps when a wrecker service came to the rescue. I think for them that is a routine occurrence.

The road that the Renee was on plenty of teenagers cruised. Two girls rode by the Renee and I ran and made beautiful dive through the air and into their car window. I went into the back seat and had a good chat with the girls. That dive was my moment. A moment of misjudgment and I would have landed on the pavement. They lived in Cartersville, Georgia, not far from Marietta. After we got back I called her and had a few dates with her.

Three of my friends, Parks, Paul, and Larry B. preferred to sit in the room and stay drunk. They had a big beer can pyramid. While they were out to eat one day the room cleaners cleaned up the apartment and threw away the beer cans. They were very mad and made another pyramid and waited for the cleaners to come in the next day.One of my friends called them the “N” word. The cleaners threw down their stuff and quit on the spot.

They went to the office to get their pay and Wart insisted those boys wouldn’t cause any harm, so he told them to apologize or he was kicking them out. So, he got the cleaners back to the room and told the boys to go ahead and apologize. One of them said, “We are sorry we called you Nxxxxxs Nxxxxxs!” They walked out with Wart pleading with them to stay. The damage was done, he told them just because of them they would have to clean their own room. He didn’t want to refund any money.

What they (and me) were not aware of was a black civil rights leader was in town checking on racism charges. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The blacks protested by walking down the beach of Daytona.

The Marietta crowd jeered and got out their beer openers (church keys) to scrape any car driving down the beach to show … to show…. What?

And on the NBC News, Huntley and Brinkley in the evening it showed the black protesters marching and the whites jeering. Several parents recognized their children in the white jeering crowd. They were horrified and ordered their kids home immediately.

Monty decided he was going to stay another week. I rode back with three other friends in a convertible. Before we crossed over the state line into Georgia we stopped at a little tourist trap and one of us stole a baby live alligator and another one of us stole a little live monkey.

Going through south Georgia the Okefenokee Swamp was to our left. Somehow the driver managed to drive off the road into mushy lands. I don’t know if that is considered the swamp or not. We let the stinking monkey go into the swamp. The alligator was kept by one of us.

I Am Still Wearing Out the Blue Grass Subject

Also while on the Square in Dahlonega view various bluegrass artists were two bang bang kind of art that added a certain clicking beat rhythm to their music.

In the tent where we watched the dulcimer artists play. The blond lady (recall the picture) pulled out a little handmade wooden man on a little paddle-looking thing, with a long stick behind him. It had body actions almost like a marionette puppet. She controlled it dancing on the little wooden paddle and the beat was right along with the music. It added to it all.

Back on the streets after the rain went by was one group of fiddlers and banjo pickers who had a little wooden platform in front of them, no bigger than a pallet, in fact it probably was a pallet... the kind a fork lift would lift up with goods on it and stack someplace.

People were invited to come on up and get on the pallet and do a jig to their music. There dancing reminded me a lot of the Irish Jig, but it more like the Drunk Mountaineer Stomp. People who tried dancing on the wood platform looked dazed and drunk. But they were good. One guy was dancing away, clicking to the music and suddenly an aged gray-blond long drink of water skinny woman with denim and a cowboy hat jumped up and jointed him on the platform and they both did an excellent job.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Hambone

Do you know what the Hambone is? It is a form of music making. Your body is the musical instrument and you rapidly slap at various parts of your body with your opened hands in a rhythm beat.

It is a probably considered a form a of jazz or blues. It is thought of little black shoe shiners playing hambone music back in the early 40s.

BUT!!! It is not limited to poor blacks that cannot afford a musical instrument. Poor white people that cannot afford a musical instrument play the hambone too.

Yesterday in Dahlonega we were tempted to go to the music hall to see a person we have known since he was a child to play with a group called the Gold Rush. We were reluctant because admission was $15 per person, and just walking around the area there were all kinds of people playing free. So, we decided, what the heck, shelled out thirty bucks and went in.

And glad we did.

The music hall is an old ex-church building. There were four different musical groups – actually three groups and one solo performer. The music was very good. One of the group’s main man did the hambone.

That reminded me in 1960 when we went to Daytona right after graduation from high school.

All of us were partying heavy. A homeless person, about our age, materialized. He was right in the middle of all our action, and drinking our beer and eating our to-go food. He was witty and quiet a story teller of his adventures. He also was an excellent hambone player.

We called him Charley Hambone. He was from Chattanooga.

Monty was very impressed with Charley Hambone’s ability to play Hambone and I forgot the details, but Charley ended up living in Marietta for a week or so to teach Monty how to do the Hambone. Then, he just sort of faded away.

In Daytona, that year, our bunch made Huntley and Brinkley News on NBC News.

I might tell about that someday, after I go over the fine print of the law about the Statue of Limitations.

Dulcimer

In this tent we ran in to get away from the rain we were treated to a nice dulcimer conert. I know nothing about the dulcimer. Each one looked diffrently, all made of wood. I suspect the musical instrument is hand crafted with the person buying giving the specifications he wants on it.Not in the picture but near by doing summersalts or something was this little heavy set kid immature kid that had a goatee. I imagine he and his friend, equally immature were local high school kids helping out.I was watching them out fart each other, out belch each other, and giggling when they were setting up the sound system... then suddeny, he turned around to me and made a big strange smiling insane face - which reminded me of what they did in the movie Cool World or something similar.I surpised me, because I am not used to people recognizing my presence.Surpisingly, when the Dulcimer group completed he grabbed the mike and in a very professional radio announcer's voice said, "Lets give a big hand to...." Then he went on to talk about the weather, and then stayed talking ad-libbing until that group packed up and left and the next group came in and sat up. Then he introduced them. I think he was a teenage announcer on a local bluegrass station.

Ed

This is Ed in his WWI uniform.He is my father's mother's brother. He is why my name is Edwin. Although his name is Edward, my father was named after him, but instead somebody wrote down Edwin instead of Edward, and I am a Junior, being named after my father.

Why we are not Edward Sr., and Edward Jr. was probably a clerical error. Details, details.

Edward married late in life. He had two sons. As they grew up the youngest complained because of the cold wind whistling through the cracks of the old house they lived in and his father would say, "Be grateful for what you have son." That son grew up to be a successful business man. The other son, the oldest, was involved with always doing something to get rich quick. He was also a big gambler. He won the local pool hall in a poker game, so I heard.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Cashiers and Spilling Water

It is raining now, and supposed to lighten up this afternoon. So, after giving it some thought we decided to go to a mall this morning and look for even more clothes for our trip and after that head on to North Georgia.

We have to make our decisions based on the Rain God and have we sacrificed anybody to Him lately.

Yesterday we went to at Kohl's a young lady with a baby that I thought was Mexican got into a long conversation with the male cashier, who I also thought was Mexican, they spoke in a foreign language.

I think I must have looked too nosy into their conversation and they felt the need to enlighten me. The young lady explained they were from Jordan and they were going over the label on the shirt, that she pointed out was made in Jordan and the quality number on it.

OK - as long as you Far Easterns an't discussing a suicide bombing or a terrorist attach of something, as long as you were discussing a shirt label.

Also, apparently the cashier was gay. He had a flouncy way about him. I bet he was a popular sort in his homeland. I doubt if he will ever returned home I thought.

At least he had both hands, which might be the sign of a honest man over there.

Then we went to Walmart which employs it fair share of rednecks.

At the cash register there my wife and the cashier were having a disagreement about a coupon, and the cashier there to relieve her was standing there holding her cash tray tried carrying on small talk with me and told me she has a bank in her yard that is too steep to use a lawnmower on so she and her husband bought a weedeater - actually, it was the brand name Weedeater, but it was a blower. She told me the box said Weedeater, but only had a long tube to blow through. She said her husband tried cutting the weeds on the bank with it and just blew air. She shrugged, like saying in body language, "Go figure".

We had an enjoyable evening at the Thai Restaurant. The food was good and I on purpose picked spicy food, some kind of yellow curry, chicken. It wasn't as spicy as I was wishing for - like I wanted my sinuses to loosen up and my eyes to water. But it was good anyway.

We talked a long time after the table was cleared. In fact, I thought longer than we should, there were customers with no place to sat waiting. During this time, one gesture with my hand and arm making a point on something and I knocked my glass of water over, which luckily enough the water landed on my place on the table and into my lap. That was a little embarrassing.... but suddenly some very kind quick acting Asian women materialized and got it all cleaned up, except they didn't try to clean it off my lap. Oh well.

Friday, April 21, 2006

What's Happening

Just this and that.

Today Anna has a long list of places to go today. She wrote them down so we won't forget some of them. So, he hit the floor running this morning.

Yesterday I carried my sister to meet a group of fellow seniors travelers that is going on a trip to Washington, DC. They left yesterday and will be back Tuesday evening. I was looking over the itinerary and it looks like a lot will be packed in, a lot of sights. And, someone else will do the driving, you don't have to haggle over motel room trying to decide where to sleep or to dine either. That may be the way to go.

Interesting a couple weeks ago she went with the organization to Callaway Gardens, near Warm Springs, Ga (FDR's Little White House) and she sat behind an old class mate of mine named Tate. She overhead him telling someone of some quaint European little town he may go this summer.

More about Tate and his family someday.

I looked over her list of the people that are going this time and I saw another old school mate and neighbor. His name is Frank. He and his wife is on the manifest. When we were growing up he looked like a little man and so did his puppet he carried around. The puppet was the kind that sits in your lap and you makes his lips move. I wonder if he still has that thing... and if so, I wonder what his wife thinks of it? Some time in high school Frank and I parted company. I think I started running with a wilder crowd and the only thing I remember our junior and senior years every time I spoke to Frank he would look at me in a snob disapproving way and never smiled with me again.

Tonight we are to meet one of Anna's ex-bosses and her husband at new restaurant they discovered, a Thai eatery that has spicy food. I'm game, because I like spicy food, but Anna is reluctant, she doesn't like spicy food.

This ex-boss applied for a higher level at a U.S. office in Quebec, Canada. Now, two years later she is back here with a new promotion. Anna and I both are not that promotion, or money minded. We like to find our level of competence and do it good, and not get greedy and want more and more.

Then tomorrow we hope to go to Dahlonega (previous blog), although it might rain, but what is a little rain, it might clean the soul.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Navy VI

We mourned as a nation and as individuals as our president was laid to rest at Arlington with little John saluting his father’s casket which made us bawl even more.

On the base Don and I would have a nightly session at the EM Club, which became a second home.

Also we took an interest in photography and developing our own black and white photographs. In the biggest hangar, next to ours, was the base’s official photographer’s shop. We made friends with him and asked him questions about developing black and white pictures. Before long we were coming and going from his developing lab like we owned it.

Don, Reuben, other friends and I begin to frequent all the bars in and around the base between the base and Toms River and the base and Lakewood.

We found a bar down a small street off the main street in Lakewood that mostly black and Latinos hung out on the street corners. There was a bar there we named Bar X. Why did we Christened Bar X? Because it was so seedy. Inside the clientele looked so seedy and up to no good.

We would sit in a booth and watch the people and give our witty opinions about them. It is a wonder gave didn’t give their witty opinions about us, maybe with their wit they could carve us up into something funny. Every time we went to Lakewood we always made a point to drop by Bar X.

And it didn’t take us long to find take note of the bar across the street, Bar Z. It was twice as seedy as Bar X. When we first entered Bar Z a big heavy set black woman put her hand palms on the back her head and had a little song for us:

Play with my Box,And I will suck your cock!

I think she thought it rhymed.

Bar Z had a jazzy blues band which was pretty good.

A big bar on the ocean, just north of Sea Side Heights was Murphy’s. Which was very Irish. They had some interesting customers. Barney the paper-boy came in and cried over his beer a few times while we were there. An aged long-legged lady with still good posture who used to be a Rocket in her prime seemed to always be there, and wanting to tell newcomers about her claim to fame.

At Murphy’s we met several female school teachers who lived in New York City and they went in together and bought a ocean near bungalow. They became part of our life for quiet a while.

Closer to the base in the town of Lakehurst, was a bar that was nice and friendly. We found ourselves there a bunch of times.

Down the street and around the corner was downtown Lakehurst. There was a laundry ran by a mother, father that spoke in an accent, and their two teenage daughters who seemed to hang around to meet the men from the base, but did not speak in an accent. We did some of our business with them. One day while the mother was handing me a laundry receipt she had a tattoo some place on her hand or arm, I forgot which. It was a number. I asked Sam about that because he is the one who recommended them for laundry and he told me they were prisoners in a concentrated camp.

Also, about a half block off the main street of the town of Lakehurst was a little house with a yard about the size of a porch and a picket fence. It was the home of Obie, the head petty officer in our Personnel Office. He had a wife named Lucy. Lucy was a drunk. She loved a good fight. Obie and Lucy had a sweet little girl about 8 years old that Obie sort of took care of, Lucy was too drunk most the time.

At some kind of office party off the base we met Lucy and it wasn’t long before she called Don and I and invited us to her house for a dinner. Through our talks we found out she couldn’t cook, but Don considered himself an excellent chef and volunteered to do the cooking. He said he would cook spaghetti.

We went to the grocery store and bought the ingredients and right peppers and the right spices. For it to be as tasty as he had planned the sauce would have to simmer a good while, so we asked Lucy if we could come over early to start on it. I dropped by and bought the wine.

The gourmet dinner was a flop. The spaghetti and sauce was good and tasty but more people showed up than we had planned on. Lucy also invited two single women for Don and I to get to know better, and they were like Lucy drunken bar-hopping flies that had masculine nicotine voices. And a family of four showed up that Lucy invited – the man of the family was big and dumb and a loudmouth. I don’t remember his wife saying much, she probably just chased her ill-mannered misbehaving kids around.

The big crude burly guy said something to the effect that “There an’t much there!” Then he said if they expect him to eat that stuff he needed some catsup. Don was fuming. I forgot the details, but somehow Lucy got in a fight with one of the sweet-hearts lined up for Don and I, and when I say fight, I mean fight. Face slapping and kicking. I guess they had some kind of honor, neither one of them pulled the other’s hair. But who cared? Everybody was drunk anyway. Don, who usually was the first to get intoxicated sat there and fumed. His moment of being in the spotlight was ruined.

On our first weekend trip with my car we decided to visit my uncle who lived in Carmel, New York.

I Shot the Sheriff But Did Not Shoot His Deputy

As a tease, sort of, I asked Carolyn, of GINGER QUILL (link on right) did I ever tell her the time a warrant was issued for my arrest in Panama City, Florida, in 1961, and I wonder if the Statue of Limitations are over yet.

Back in the late 50s and early 60s we young people would go to Panama City every year.

In 1961 I was working and attending college at night. The girl I was dating, was going to Panama City with a group of girls, after they graduated. It was surprisingly how many Marietta High School students and Marietta alumni showed up. Even many of our friends who joined the service showed up, one was even AWOL. It was a way of life that we thought would last forever. It was like an annual pilgrimage to the Holy Lands.

The girl I was dating shared a motel room with a bunch of girls. We partied down by the motel's pool and the beach, which steps led to.

During that week I went deep sea fishing for the first time on Captain Anderson's fishboat and caught a big grouper. It was the largest and won the pot money that day. Ironically, Ronnie Witcher hooked a red snapper by the tail, which was pretty funny. I attended Ronnie's memorial service serval weeks ago.

Back to the party at the motel. Several of the girls were up in their rooms and I thought it would be the teenage show-off thing to do was to climb on the ledge that ran just around 3.5 feet under the window line and climb in their window. Which I was drunk and was doing. Never walk a ledge when you are drunk.

The owner or the manager of the motel saw me and hollered at me. When I heard him and looked down and saw his angry face I yanked at the window I was beside thinking I could open it and jump out of his sight. But when I jerked at the window's frame the framed screen came off in my hands which cause me to lose my balence and I was about to topple over and fall. But, I let go of the screen and grabbed the window's ledge and crawled in.

The frame screen fell hitting Mr. Owner/or/Manager on the head, knocking him out.

We left after that. Later that evening at a Putt-Putt Golf place somebody told me the guy that got knocked out had a warrant out for my arrest.

I avoided that motel after that and whenever I police car would cruise by I would look the other way - just like the fugitive.

Mama's Aunts and Uncles

These are my grandfather's siblings, my mother's father's brothers and sisters. They grew up and died in Murray County, Ga., near an area just south of the Tennessee line, south of Cleveland, Tennessee.

The two women standing and the man on the left never married. They lived in a un-painted Norman Bates looking house on a hill in the middle of a big farm.

The man sitting in the middle was a crafty horse-trader type of farmer. He lived just down the road, also in a big two story house, but his was painted white. One of his two sons became a millionaire farmer and on his huge farm was an airfield registered with the FA. He also owned a bank in Chatsworth.

The man on the right moved to Detroit as a young man to find work and married a Detroit native and spent most his adult life there, but retired back near his relatives. One time his brothers and sisters had to hold him down while his cousin Willis, a country doctor, amputated his frostbit toes. I don't know much else about him except his daughter joined a carnival and left home.

Lets get back to the brother and sisters who lived together in the big unpainted house. As a preteen I used to love to visit them. He had a barn with mules, horses, and pigs and he told me the horse was mine, I could come and pet him anytime I wanted. But I think the ownership ended there.

One time we had Sunday Dinner with them. I was surprised at the taste of the milk. It was bitter. I was told it was the taste of the sour weed they graized on. On that day, while rambling through their house I found a shotgun leaning against a corner and also I found one of those brown jugs, that looked typical in the cartoons of hillbillies that would lie against a tree and take snorts of moonshine. So, being the little Charlie Chaplin that I was, I took the shotgun and the jug and pretended to stagger in the parlor taking a swig out of the brown jug. The great uncle leaped up very serious looking and yanked the shotgun out of my hand. He said it was loaded. Boy, was that embarrassing!

His name was Wesley. His sisters were Alice and Nancy. Later Alice died and Nancy broke her leg or hip and it didn't set right, so she could not get around so she was put in a rest home. After Wesley was living alone the house caught on fire and Wesley burned up with the house.

After my mother heard about Wesley dying in the fire she cried and cried. She was closer to her daddy's siblings than I realized.

Also they were the family artifacts keepers. They kept in the house the heirlooms handed down and most of the family portraits, photographs, etc. - up in smoke.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Gobble Gobble!

Another Teen Dies In a Wreck

Yesterday before Anna got home I heard on the TV news of a "deadly" accident on Bryant Lane. Bryant Lane is the road that my street runs into. They showed a overview from a helicopter and there below was a dump drunk and a smashed in car. The news said one person was killed. I heard and felt the helicopter’s prop rotations. On the news it looked like the traffic was backed up. By the best I could tell it was about a quarter mile away.

I called Anna and asked where was she and she said turning onto Bryant Lane. I advised her to turn off the first street of our subdivision and get home back the back way, the traffic may be backed up, on down near our street, which she did.

Then I went to a meeting that wasn't a meeting (see previous blog "Senior Moment").On the way back I went a little out of way to see about where the accident took place. Two police cars were still there with their blue lights flashing. As I rode by I noticed a side of the road fence was knocked down, maybe 200 feet from where the cops were. Was the fence knocked down a separate incident?

Nope. Today, after buying groceries (5% off on Wednesdays to seniors) again I went a bit out of way to look at the scene again and this time where the fence was knocked down was many flowers and some reefs and stuffed animals.

I read in the paper that the person that was killed was a teenage girl at a nearby high school. She lived in the subdivision across from the accident, one block away.

The paper said it was the 2nd teenager that got killed in auto accidents in two days. As I grew into a young adult several of my friends were killed in auto wrecks. I think it is just a sad fact that teenagers do not have the experience to drive well.

But again, they never will get the experience until they start driving. I think some of it is due to immature driving quick decisions that you can only gain by experience.

Navy - V

The middle of the 3 hangars was our work place at HU-4. The 2 hangars with the sunset was across the way from the 3 hangars.

The last time we left me, I was leaning against a push broom in the passage way of the HU-4 Squadron administration section.

I got on friendly terms with several people from Personnel, Dick, the commander’s yeoman, Sam, the legal yeoman, and Ron of the Information and Educational office.

Sam and Ron were both from Minneapolis. Dick was a premature gray haired young man who was an art college professor in Michigan and his father owned a car dealership in East Lansing.

Sam and Ron were cube mates next to my cube. Sam’s voice was high an effeminate and Ron’s voice was deep and masculine. To hear them kid each other reminded me of the Odd Couple, except they were both very articulate.

Dick the college professor always had a deep witty comment to make about everything. Some of his comments you might not catch on to until hours later.

I have a lousy handwriting, and if it gets cold I cannot even figure out what I was trying to say, so I always type whenever possible. So, when I sent letters home, I would go into either Personnel or Information & Education and type my letters – being out in the hall, I pretty much knew if their office officers’ habits and if one had just walked out or not.

I kept my job as janitor of the admin hallway for only a short time. I don’t remember how long, but I don’t think it was over seven or eight work days. When one of the men in Personnel left, either his active duty time was up or he was transferred, when they looked around for a replacement – someone who could type - they saw me in the back of the room typing a letter home and looked no more.

I started working in Personnel the next day.

By now I was friends with Dick who had a car and Sam who had a car. They both showed Don and I the area. Don was just a week ahead of me. We got to see more of NYC, through the guide of Dick. He showed us Wall Street, the NY Stock Exchange, Battery Park, more museums, like the Museum of Modern Art. Sam took us to see the play FANTASTICKS which was just getting started good as an Off-Broadway play in the Village.

We also went to Sea Side Heights, to ponder our thoughts at the ocean, which was 13 miles away. We went to movies in Lakewood, about 5 miles north, bars in Toms River, about 5 miles east, whatever at Atlantic City, about 40 miles south, Philadelphia, 40 miles west, and above that was New Hope, Pennsylvania, which was a artsy kind of place. New Hope was in Bucks County, Pa., I remember reading a book “Devil In Bucks County” which was pretty good and I believe it helped us to serve sort of a guide.

In the Personnel Office it didn’t take long for me to figure out the system. The non-petty officers did all the work, the head petty officer, in our case, a first class named Obie, would check over our work and give it back for corrections, otherwise, give it to the division officer, a Lieutenant – two silver bars, who would come in once a day and sign papers and off he would go again. The officers usually were flying helicopters in training, or hanging out in the Officer’s Lounge. That is the way of the world, those who work the less get paid the most. You get paid according to the pecking order, not your skills or the amount of work.

One Sunday we rode down to Delaware to the DuPont estate to see a fountain concert.

Then, I started thinking of all these places within driving distance, I needed my car, which was a PV544 Volvo. I decided to apply for leave and go home get it.

My friend Monty’s mother owned a PV544 Volvo and I was impressed with how synchronized the motor and gears were I wanted one and bought one eventually. That would be my first of two PV544s.

Earlier I mentioned the two men who looked at me strangely when I rushed up to them in a panic mode to tell them to run for their lives the Russians were invading. From that point on I kept running into them in the chow hall or at the base movies, or sometimes even in a local bar or the EM Club. We had a nice speaking relationship. I knew they were going to North Carolina and offered to go and help with the gas.

I rode with them and they let me out someplace near Charlotte, North Carolina. I hitchhiked to Atlanta and was let out, the rides must have been uneventful, I don’t remember them.

Next I was picked up by a man in his early 30s. He had been drinking. He asked me where I was going and I said Marietta. He said, “Heck, he didn’t have anything to do, he will carry me all the way.” I thought it would take several rides to get through Atlanta., yet the first person volunteered to carry me all the way home. “How lucky could I get?” I thought.

That was before he put his hand on my thigh. I got upset and told him to let me out. He said he was just kidding, don’t get upset, he would still carry me all the way home. Then as we were going over the Chattahoochee Bridge he put his hand on my leg again, and I screamed at him and started to try to unlock the door. He said just take it easy, he was just joking, but he wouldn’t do it again.

I sat in the moving car very nervous trying to decide my escape route. Then, I thought what the heck, I gave him directions all the way to our house.

I jumped out and ran into the house.

As my family was greeting me I saw his car past by several times. Then no more.

Interesting Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” kind of thing: Before I went on active duty the last time I filled up my tank I left my gas cap on the pump at a little independent gas station. Months later my father, knowing I was headed home to pick up the car thought he would take the car to a service station to fill it up for me. While the car was being filled, no self-service then, he noticed a gas cap on top of the pump and the person pumping the gas told him to go ahead and take it, it has been sitting on top of the pump for months. It was my gas cap. The same one I left there in July. It was November at the time.

I only stuck around a day or two and headed back. I didn’t want to waste my leave.

I left early one morning and drove all day, stopping only to buy gas. That was before there were many expressways. I remember entering the New Jersey Turnpike and feeling very tired. It was late at night. There were three tractor trailers ahead of me, and as I caught up with them to pass them suddenly the three big trucks turned into three elephants, holding tails with their trunks. That is what endless driving alone will do.

I got to the barracks in the wee hours of morning and I was going to check in, but if I did that I would expect to be at work the upcoming morning and I was exhausted, it was Friday, so, I decided to wait until the following Monday to check in and sleep all morning.

It was Friday, November the 22nd, 1963.

Before I got my sleep out, I don’t remember the time but people started coming down the wide hall in the barracks. People were talking, more than I have heard before. Something was going on.

I heard Sam open his locker next door and I hollered over to him, “What’z going on?”

“Kennedy was shot in Dallas!”“You’re joking!”“No, he was in a parade and was shot!”“Which Kennedy?”“The President!”

I felt kind of sad the next few days on into Thanksgiving. It was very sad in the barracks and out in the local bars.

We drove out to the non-populated beach at Sea Side Heights. It was nice place to get away from everything.

A Senior Moment

Yesterday evening I had dinner ready early. We ate as soon as Anna came home.

The purpose of the early dinner is that I had plans going to the Cobb County Genealogical Society meeting that evening. I don't go to all the meetings, just the ones that they promise an interesting subject.

This month's subject: Indian Trails in Cobb County and the speaker was to be a doctor somebody who did a lot of research in the matter.

So, after we finished eating I drove seven miles to downtown Marietta to the Central Library. The meetings are scheduled to start at 7:00, I wanted to get there at least 30 minutes early so I could look over their CDs and also piddle in their genealogical room.

So, as I walked into the door that you have to press a square thing to make them open easier I looked at my watch and it was 6:30. Perfect! Then I also noticed the date on my watch. It said the 18th. The Cobb County Genealogical Society meets at the Central Library the 4th Tuesday of the month, not the 3rd.

Shit.

A senior moment? Probably. But also I would like to, just like our President would do, in a mistake like this, point the blame someplace else.

Up until two months ago I always received my email newsletter from the Cobb County Genealogical Society newsletter on Thursday, before the next Tuesday's meeting. But last month it came two weeks before the meeting Tuesday - I caught that one. But this month I am a month older.

Oh well, no harm done, except my gas burned, which if converted to money could probably feed a family of 9 for two months in a 3rd world country.

Earl Hickey and Silent Bob

I noticed some kind of TV blip that went by before I realized it but it looks like Jay and Silent Bob (Clerks) will have another movie coming out soon. In the upcoming movie Ethan Suplee (Randy Hickey in "My Name Is Earl" sitcom) was shown in the blip with Jay and Silent Bob.

I mentioned it to my son and he told me that Jason Lee (Earl Hickey) has been in almost all, if not all, of Kelvin Smith's movies.

So, to refresh, or update myself, I am in training for the next Kelvin Smith, aka Silent Bob, movie. I am reviewing my Kelvin Smith collection while I walk on the treadmill each day. Today I got through a big part of "Dogma" and sure 'nuff Jason Lee is in it. He plays an agent from Hell, the neat looking guy in the white suit - which threw me off, because I have type-cast him as a laid-back sloppy looking guy that

There Is Always More

These three people are three relatives. From left to right, the first is my first cousin Ray. Next to him is Lolagene who married my uncle Doug (he is the one making a face). Ray was Doug's nephew, but they were about the same age.

I didn't know Ray very well. After he served in WWII, he settled in Newark, NJ, and after he retired came back to Marietta, but he wasn't around in my formative years like Doug was.

Doug loved to kid his nieces and nephews. You had a very quick wit and we would think he didn't have a serious bone in him.

He almost was a professional baseball player one time. A scout came to town to watch him play, and left, without leaving any promises. And wasn't heard from again.

Doug and Lolagene had three children, two girls and a boy.

I remember one time on one of those Sunday afernoon visits Doug taking my father and me around behind his garage to show us his new possession: A hog in a pen, which was completely out of character for him... he had more of a city-bred way about him.

In the summer of 1985 he called me and asked me was I going to the Hunter Reunion in Blairsville, Ga., that year and I said yes. He asked did we have room for him, he would like to go and meet the distant cousins he didn't know and I said we had plenty of room, I was the only going. Anna or the boys didn't want to go.

He went with me and we had some nice quality time together. He was no longer the jester. He was now more sincere and serious. He told me his son's wife had a baby just a day or so before.

He got to meet his long lost cousins, some he knew already but didn't know they were cousins - they knew each other from working at Lockheed.

One of our Hunter cousins, Austine, who was a grammar school principal, wife of a University of Georgia professor, took Doug and I to meet her father, who was at home alone, he was about 90 years old. She showed us around the house and pointed out bullet holes in the wall, ceiling, and floor, where the Hunters had a ruckus one time.

Doug really enjoyed that trip. I also took him to the cemetery of our ancestor, John Hunter, and to John's cabin that is still standing.

Doug died about 6 months later.

Recently I discovered that in 1946, Doug picture was in a group picture of the Marietta Fire Department. Digging deeper, by a cousin, she found Doug's name on the payroll roster of the fire department in 1946, earning something like $160 a month.

This was news to me. I thought I knew Doug pretty well. I called his daughter and the two living aunt-in-laws of that generation and none of the three knew about Doug being a fireman.

It Only Hurts When I Laugh

Daily for several weeks now I have walked on the treadmill about 45 minutes, while walking working up the incline at .5 a time until it gets to 4.0. Which pretty much gets me all sweaty. Then would I run on it for about 15 minutes with a lower incline.

I use a lower incline because while running I keep an eye on the heart monitor and know it is not wise to go over 130. And the steeper the incline the most likely it will climb quickly over 130.

So, usually while running the pie-safe door pops opened by the whole den room vibrating. We decided that maybe I should quit running on the treadmill until the walls underneath the den are made to give it more support. Now, it is supported by about 6 or 8 big metal poles and we suspect the poles are corroding.

So, my plan has been revised is to first walk on the treadmill like I have been, then while hyped up and covered with sweat go outside and run.

Which my first day of running outside in a long time was Saturday.

What I had not considered is the hilly area we live in. You are either going down hill or up hill. And the incline of the hilly area is steeper than what I have been pampering myself with on the treadmill.

Sunday and since my thigh leg muscles are very tight and sore. It is painful to walk up and down the stairs to the basement.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Christms 1926 - Ho Ho

This is my mother-in-law's family and extended family. My mother-in-law is the little girl up front on the right holding a doll, and next to her is her brother. Another brother is in the middle row.

Her brother next to her went into the Marines during WWII and afterwards had a career with the Postal Service. He died within a few years. The little boy in the middle went into the Army, the Air Army, that is, and became a pilot. After the war he became a TWA pilot and now is retired. He, his wife, and my mother-in-law generally meet at a restaurant on most Sundays for dinner. There was one other daugther to reach adulthood and she became a banker and died about ten years ago. Two or three siblings died as babies.

Have you ever noticed with old pictures you rarely see people smile? I doubt if the photographer told every body to say "cheeeese!" on the court of three.

Dahlonega

Up until 1832 it was illegal for white men to come north of the Chattahoochee River in Georgia. A treaty existed to keep white men out that was signed by the representatives of the Creek Indians, Cherokee Indians, and the United States Government.

Then, gold was discovered in Dahlonega by white men. The fact that the white men were there illegally to discover the gold was not even considered, as far as I know.

“There is gold in them’ thar hills” was originated by Georgians talking about Dahlonega. The Treaty to keep white men out was quickly voided. What legal loophole did the government use to allow white men to come in and mine for the gold? Who needs a legality loophole? Gold is gold and Indians were not even Americans.

However, the Indians did sue and carried the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in their favor. Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson was president then. He made a statement something like, “Supreme Court Chef Justice John Marshall made the decision, now, lets see him enforce it.” In other words, the Indians lost, because gold is gold and greed is greed.

The State of Georgia had a land lottery which several of my ancestors got land in and mined for gold. Another ancestor, Jason H. Hunter, was one of the soldiers in the infamous “Trail of Tears” that marched the Indians, inhumanely, to Oklahoma.

Now, in present time the land of Lumpkin County has been hydraulically stripped, where in many places the land is not good for much except to trap tourists and be nice to the yuppie people who have cabins near by.

I have had friends right after our high school years to make bootleg moonshine trips from Dahlonega to Marietta from time to time. To make a moonshine haul was something of a status symbol. The movie “Thunder Road” impressed us.

My senior year in high school, I think it was probably spring of 1960, a friend found out that their was a certain cliff north of Dahlonega that at the foot of it, many feet down, were a bunch of cars that went off the road. Some of the people there in Lumpkin County, and neighboring Fannin and Union Counties after they got tired of paying car payments would push their cars off that certain cliff and collect the money from the insurance.

Several of us decided that we would go up very early one weekend and with a long rope lower ourselves to the bottom and pick prime parts from the various vehicles and hoist them up via the rope. We planned to be there at the top at daybreak. We preplanned to leave home at midnight.

What we didn’t plan was our social life. I think four of us went on the trip. Two of us went to a party on the spur of the moment and got drunk, just a few hours before our planned time to leave. That was a dumb thing to do.

On the way up we drunk plenty of coffee. North of Dahlonega is a fork in the road. At the fork is a big pile of rocks and boulders. The legend is that an Indian princess was buried there, I think there was also a love story involved, like in every Lover’s Leap place you have been to. If you turn right at the fork you would go over Blood Mountain, by Vogel State Park, and into Blairsville. If you turn left you would go more directly north and head towards Suches, Georgia, and Morganton, Georgia, which is the road we went.

We arrived at the spot much earlier than we had planned. We pulled over and parked. On one side of us was the cliff over looking a valley of blackness but with some speckled lights. On the right, was a mountain. We were on a outward curve of a bend.

Not much to do until it got light, so we sat around in the road and talked and talked about adventures of the past.

One friend named Larry went off on the mountain side and found a several fallen limbs. He loved to build fires of big logs, which he did – in the middle of the road, in a outward bend, which hid by the geography of the road…. Gasp!

We continued to talk about old times, good times, and what all. Then, off in the distance we heard a truck shifting gears on the mountain terrain. We knew it was headed towards us. We tried stomping out the fire, we tried moving the burning logs but couldn’t because they were covered in flames and the truck was getting louder and louder.

Oh shit! Was about our only verbal response.

Around the corner its headlights materialized and his brakes begin to squall. We took off to the side of the road.

In a last minute decision the driver decided to accelerate and plow right through it. KAPOW! Red cinders flew up in the air, and the flaming logs scattered. A couple even went off the cliff. Luckily for us no big fire occurred that got uncontrollable.

We must have been doing something right…. What?

The truck was as big as an 18- wheeler but big, high big. It was white. It looked like the kind that would have cold storage in it. Big and heavy.

He kept on going.

I brought up that when he got someplace he would probably call the law and report us. So, we left.

We went up near the town of Blue Ridge, Ga., and drove back.

I didn’t know it at the time but we rode by my great-great grandfather Elijah Petty’s grave in a family cemetery by the road. And also road by the future property my uncle bought for a weekend cabin…. Which I am going to use for a future blog.

We timed it pretty good and arrived back at the site at daybreak and lowered the rope. Larry went down, then Gene, then me. The other Larry was going to stay up top to raise the rope as we died parts to it.

Half-way down I began to feel woozy. On a dangling rope with many feet straight down I was getting sick. I couldn’t let go. I hung on for dear life and vomited. Which splattered on Gene. He took it good stride and even laughed about it.

Gene had about 2 months to live at that point. He was in a drag race, which he collided head-on with a policeman, a Mr. Hood, who had just left his house for dinner, and apparently forgot to turn on his headlights. He and Gene were killed instantly. Gene was a freshman at Georgia Tech.

We got to the bottom and there were 3 cars. Larry looked around each one and anything of value had already been stripped off.

So, back home.

Dahlonega was just about the only town of any size you would first come to as you went to the north Georgia mountains from Marietta. I remember one time double dating we were getting gas in the middle of town and there was a big sign beside the service station saying, “MAKE PEACE WITH GOD”. Joe, the other male in the car, read the sign aloud and said, “I didn’t know we were at war with Him.”

Before the year 2000 I read in the magazine North Georgia Journal or Georgia Back Roads (the magazine changed names) about a rose farm in Dahlonega. The rose farm was a family business and it told of all their species, varieties, and what all. I don’t have much interest in roses but I had an interest in the family. Their name was Ridley, which is my mother’s mother’s maiden name. I think I figured out what relationship these Ridleys were, but wanted to know more so I went to see them in 2001. When I got there I found out the Ridleys sold their rose operation to a Japanese corporation and they moved to Florida.

Sometime in the past four or five years Anna and I went to the gold museum in Dahlonega which used to be the courthouse, is in the dead center of town, and the downtown street loops one-way around it.

Dahlonega is also the home of the North Georgia Military Academy.

Last fall we went with another couple who live in nearby Cleveland to an outing in Dahlonega. It is now full of antique and gift shops. Tourists were all over the place. Yep, Gold is still in those thar hills.

The reason I just wrote just about everything I can think about Dahlonega is this coming Saturday we are going to an arts and craft festival there – a weekend event called “Bear In-The Tree Fair”. The reason we are going is that they are also having a week end long blue-grass fest there. A friend that our son went to Europe with will be there playing with his new band and we would like to hear him play again.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Brokeback Mountain & Happy Easter or Eostre

Friday we checked out Brokeback Mountain from Blockbuster and last night we got to watch it. I made it plain to the clerk at Blockbuster that it was my wife who wanted to see the movie, and I pointed out to the car, which she was sitting in.

The movie was very good. The photography was spell bounding. And as everybody knows by now it was a romance story of two cowpokes (get it?) who, had a fling while herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain. And how their lives continued afterwards. They both married women and had off-spring, but they both were in unhappy marriages and the only thing they looked forward to was their "fishing trips" they would take often together.

But they didn't bring any fish back home.

It was a good beautiful emotional story, which was doomed from the start to have an unhappy ending.

And also, HAPPY EASTER! or HAPPY EOSTRE! (if you prefer)

My Uncle John's Bathroom Reader tear-a-page-a-day calendar tells me today that Easter was orginally called Eostre, with was a spring celebration long before Christ. And they even gave painted eggs as gifts.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

The Continuing Adventures of Twiddledee & Twiddledum

As you may recall the last time we checked in on the Twiddle Brothers Twiddledum has gotten sloppy in his appearances. Before he and his older brother Twiddledee parted company Twiddledum walked behind and in step with his brother, wearing a crew cut, military camouflage fatigues, and pants tucked into his boots.

Then Twiddledum apparently moved in with a 40ish car window representative with an Arby’s and after that he became sloppy. I saw him twice at Krogers with his little short redheaded roomy buying groceries. The Arby window sales representative would carefully check his list and his coupons, carefully getting the most for the money. And Twiddledum had a dirty tee-shirt with food stains all over it and looked like he in the second or third week wearing it, and he looked exhausted. He leaned over the grocery cart as he pushed it.

I wondered what happened to Twiddledee. Did Twiddledum get mad and move in the Arby’s man or did Twiddledum find it lonely in the old house by himself and Twiddledum invited the Arby’s man to move in with him. And if so, where was Twiddledee?

Buried under the house?

Part of the mystery was solved today. The part that Twiddledee was buried under the house or not.

Twiddledee is not buried under the house. He is alive and well.

Today at Krogers I saw Twiddledee and Twiddledum standing beside the old white car their grandparents used to own, getting ready to buy groceries. Twiddledum was again looking neat with a short haircut and clean pressed clothes and his military uniform. As I walked by they was getting a live lily out of the trunk of their car.

Being that it is the day before Easter I would imagine that the lily was designated to be at either their parents’ and/or grandparents’ graves.

Washington Square Might Move Over a Few Feet

I took these pictues of Washington Square between 1963 amd 1965.

Suzanne of the blog Champaign for Unshaved Snatches (see link on right)in the comment section about my last Navy rememberance said:

"I was mortified to hear that there is a zillion-dollar plan to move the fountain in Washington Square Park a foot or two over so that it is perfectly aligned with the arch. I really cannot believe that the city does not have better things to spend our money on."

The Missing Link

Well, not exactly missing, but a link anyway. And it did make a good subject intro.

The mature mother in this picture is Frances Tyson (1844-1927) beside her is her husband James Kuykendall.They are Anna's ancestors. Beside them could be a possibility combination of two of her ten children, or one of her children and one son-in-law or daughter-in-law. It looks like the young female may be "in a family way".

Getting back to Frances Tyson Kuykendall: We already said she is Anna's progenitor. Frances grandparents were Eugene Haraves/Job Tyson (1798-1868) and Frances Eliza Portress Herring Tyson (1799-1878), which were not only Anna's ancestors, but also mine.

I had an earlier entry about Eugene Hargraves Tyson and his sister Winston who was near-by when the Cotton Gin was invented.

Because of common ancestors that makes Anna and I 3rd cousins, once removed.

We didn't know this until I got reserching my family tree and Anna's mother was searching Anna's father's family tree, and we bumped heads.

Good Saturday

Easter is here.Somebody asked me did I know there was an earthquake the moment Jesus took his last breath. No, I did not know that. Well, he did, the friend said, and told me two verses that said so, which I didn't retain.

But now, I am wondering something else about the Bible. I have read the Bible at least twice but might read the Old Testament again for a question I have: Is Heaven mentioned in the Old Testament? Is a place mentioned that after you die your soul is rewarded if you followed the Ten Commandments and/or The Golden Rule?

My sister bought a new Buick, sight unseen, from a dealership yesterday. She didn't see it until it was delivered to her. Her ten year old Buick was getting undependable and sometimes would start and sometimes wouldn't and the dealership mechanics couldn't find anything wrong with it. She wanted something more dependable. However, it is her money and if she is happy then I am happy.

I can not imagine buying something that expensive and not shopping around and comparing.